ung men to
be familiar have reaped the result in a contamination merely through
the touch of the lips. To-day a young woman in good social standing is
a sufferer from this cause. She was acquainted with a young man of
respectable family, but immoral life. His gaiety had a fascination for
her, and his reputed wildness only added to the charm. On one evening,
as he escorted her home, and took leave of her on the doorstep, she
allowed him to kiss her. It chanced that at the time she had a small
sore on her lip. The poisonous touch of his lips conveyed the
infection through this slight abrasion, and she became tainted with
the syphilitic virus, and to-day bears the loathsome disfigurement in
consequence. I do not need to multiply such cases. You can be warned
by one as well as by a hundred.[2]

A young woman of pure life married a man whose reputation was bad, but
whose social position was high. To-day she is suffering from the
horrible disease which he communicated to her, and her children have
died or are betraying to the world in their very faces the story of
their father's wrong deeds. Truly you cannot afford to be ignorant of
facts so grave as these.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] For an extended presentation of the character and diseases which
accompany vice, the reader is referred to the chapters which treat of
this subject in "What a Young Man Ought to Know." Every young woman
should be intelligent upon these important subjects. There is nothing
in this book to young men which a young woman approaching maturity may
not know, both with propriety and benefit, so that she may most
successfully protect herself from possible companionship with
well-dressed and polite but impure young men by discreetly placing the
book in the hands of her father and brothers, that they may become
intelligent concerning the dangers against which they can most
successfully protect her. It might not be improper for her, after due
acquaintance, to see that the book is placed in the hands of the one
who seeks to become her husband and the father of her children, that
she may at the proper time, and before it is too late, learn whether he
has always lived by the standards of social purity which are there set
up, and whether he is able to bring to the union the same unsullied
life and character which he expects and requires of her.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE GOSPEL OF HEREDITY.

I have often heard people say that God was unjust in making this law
of